Saw palmetto is the single most misunderstood plant on a Florida clearing job. It’s older than the state, it grows about a tenth of an inch a year, and cutting the tops off does almost nothing to it. Here is what’s actually under your lot.
Not a shrub with a stump. Something much stranger, and much harder to remove.
What looks like a palmetto stem isn’t a stem in the ordinary sense. UF/IFAS describes it as a rhizome. A specialized stem that runs horizontally at or just below the soil surface. It can reach ten to fifteen feet in total length, and a single clump can spread to eighteen feet across. The roots come off the underside of it and concentrate in the top foot of soil, though in deep sand they will go down several feet.
The growing point sits inside the top of that rhizome, wrapped in layered leaf bases like the center of an onion. The rhizome is also where the plant keeps its carbohydrate reserves. So the two things that matter, the growing point and the fuel supply, are both below the height of any mulching head.
It’s also extraordinarily slow. UF/IFAS puts stem growth at about a tenth of an inch a year in Central Florida, and estimates individual plants at five hundred to seven hundred years old. Genetic work published in 2011 on a scrub plot at Archbold Biological Station went further and concluded that clones ten thousand years old may be common.
Practically: the palmetto on your lot predates the road, the county, and in all likelihood the Spanish. It’s not going to be discouraged by one pass with a machine.
Palmetto is on most of raw parcels we quote in Brevard, Volusia, Lake, Seminole and Orange.
Saw palmetto evolved in a landscape that burned regularly, and everything about it’s a response to that. The insulated growing point survives the fire. The rhizome holds water at around ninety percent of its fresh mass and stores the energy to rebuild. UF/IFAS reports new leaves visible within seven to fourteen days of a burn, and plants carrying more than double the leaves of unburned plants within one to two years. In oak-palmetto scrub it can be back to pre-burn height inside a year.
A mulching head is, from the plant’s point of view, a less serious event than a fire. So the honest statement about mulching palmetto is this: it removes the fronds, opens the lot, and buys you a few years. It doesn’t kill the plant. The USDA Forest Service is blunt about what does work. Mechanical disturbance that dislodges and uproots the stems and rhizomes.
That’s the whole argument, and it’s the difference between mulching and grubbing on a palmetto lot.
UF/IFAS compared mechanical methods on Florida range, and the pattern is very clear.
| Method | Palmetto killed | How long it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Roller choppinga weighted bladed drum, surface work | 25–35% | Five to eight years. Cover drops sharply and the lot looks transformed, but most of the plants are alive and rebuilding. |
| A blade running 4–6 inches below gradecutting under the rhizome | 65–75% | Fifteen years or more. The difference is entirely about whether the implement gets underneath the plant. |
| Mulching the topsno ground engagement at all | Effectively none | One to four years of open ground, then it’s back. Useful. But as maintenance, not as removal. |
| Grubbing and root rakingpulling the rhizome out whole | What actually removes it | Permanent for the plants removed. This is what a building footprint requires, and it’s priced as clearing rather than mulching. |
Figures from UF/IFAS SS-AGR-105 comparing mechanical treatments on South Florida range. Separate work reports roller chopping cutting palmetto cover by as much as ninety percent. Worth knowing, because cover is what you see and mortality is what you get. A lot can look ninety percent cleared and be thirty percent killed.
We quote both and we’ll tell you which one your lot needs. On most of the parcels we look at, that’s mulching. And we say so even though it’s the cheaper line.
Some of the ground we clear is one of the rarer habitats in North America, and that has practical consequences for a job.
Florida scrub sits on deep, excessively drained sand. The Astatula, Paola and St. Lucie soil series. On old dune ridges. In our area that means the Atlantic Coastal Ridge through Brevard, the ridges inland of the Volusia coast, and the northern end of the Lake Wales Ridge and the Mount Dora Ridge running up through Lake, Orange and Seminole. The plant list is consistent: myrtle oak, Chapman’s oak, sand live oak, sand pine, rusty lyonia, Florida rosemary and saw palmetto.
Scrubby flatwoods is the related community. Pine over scrub oak and palmetto, on moderately well drained sand rather than the deep stuff. Between them they cover a large share of the raw acreage in our five counties.
How much has gone is worth knowing. Brevard County’s own environmental program records a 68.8 percent loss of Atlantic Coastal Ridge scrub in north Brevard between 1943 and 1991, and an estimated 70 percent reduction countywide on the mainland by 1999. Across the Lake Wales, Lake Henry and Winter Haven ridges the published figure is 64 percent lost to development.
We’re not going to tell you what to do with your own land. We’ll tell you that if your lot is scrub, the odds of protected species being on it are real, and that’s a conversation to have before a machine is scheduled rather than after.
This is the part of a scrub job that’s between you and the state. We’re telling you about it because finding out afterwards is far worse.
The gopher tortoise is listed as Threatened in Florida and is protected under Chapter 68A-27 of the Florida Administrative Code. The rule prohibits taking, harassing or capturing a tortoise, and prohibits molesting, damaging or destroying a burrow, except as authorized by the Commission. FWC’s own enforcement policy names the exact activity: damaging, collapsing or covering a burrow from land clearing, bulldozing, grading, paving or construction associated with land development.
FWC states that tortoises must be relocated before land clearing takes place, and that the property owner obtains the authorization to do it. There’s a narrow provision for avoidance: FWC says authorization isn’t required if all burrows are avoided by twenty-five feet in all directions. With the caveat, in their own words, that you may still be held responsible if work within that distance collapses a burrow or harms the tortoise.
What we do: we walk the lot with you and point out burrows we can see. If there are any, we stop there. Relocating tortoises is specialist work done by agents authorized by FWC. It’s not something we do, arrange, or advise on. Talk to FWC or to an authorized gopher tortoise agent, and we’ll schedule around whatever comes out of that.
It’s worth knowing why the rule is as strict as it is. FWC calls the tortoise a keystone species and states that more than 350 other species benefit from its burrows. Among them the Florida pine snake, the gopher frog, the Florida mouse and the eastern indigo snake, which is itself federally Threatened and lays its eggs in tortoise burrows.
The Florida scrub-jay is federally Threatened, listed in 1987, and is the only bird species found nowhere but Florida. FWC states the population has declined ninety percent over the past century. Brevard County matters more than most places here: the Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral populations together are among the largest remaining anywhere, and Brevard’s environmental program ties an estimated 87 percent county decline to the loss of scrub.
The habitat they need is specific. Scrub oak roughly four to five and a half feet tall with open patches of bare sand through it. That’s the sort of low, scruffy, “untidy” lot that looks like it needs clearing. If your parcel is coastal ridge scrub in Brevard or Volusia, it’s worth finding out what’s on it first.
The sand skink is federally Threatened and occurs in Lake, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Highlands, Marion and Putnam counties. Two of which we work in. It lives in high, dry sandy ground and US Fish and Wildlife survey guidance keys on elevations above roughly eighty-two feet on specific sandy soil series. If you’re on ridge ground in Lake or west Orange, it belongs on your list of things to check.
We ask for photos before anything else, and on palmetto ground we ask for photos taken from ground level rather than from a drone. From above, a palmetto lot and a light brush lot look the same. From eye height you can see how tall the fronds are standing, how much oak is mixed in, and whether there’s a root mat holding the surface together.
Then we look for burrows, for standing water, for anything that says the low ground stays wet, and for the access route. On scrub ground the machine travels well almost year round because the sand drains so fast. It’s one of the few Florida habitats where the wet season barely changes the schedule.
If it’s mulching, one pass, no hauling, and you have an open lot in a day or two per acre depending on density. If it’s grubbing, the rhizome mat comes out and that’s slower, dirtier and more expensive, and we’ll have told you which one you’re buying before we start.
Because for most purposes killing it’s not the objective. Mulching turns an impassable lot into one you can walk, see, mow around, run a fence through and defend from fire, and it does that for a fraction of what removal costs. It’s maintenance, and maintenance is what most acreage actually needs. It’s only the wrong purchase when a structure is going on the ground.
It depends on how heavy it was and what else is competing. On a typical Central Florida lot you’ll see green within months and it’ll be visibly back somewhere between eighteen months and four years. The second pass is much cheaper than the first because there’s far less standing.
That’s grubbing, and yes. But it’s a different machine, a different price, and it leaves you with open sand and a debris pile rather than a chip layer. The UF/IFAS work is clear that you have to get under the rhizome, not through it, which is why surface methods keep disappointing people.
Not around the burrows, no. That’s between you and FWC and it has to be settled before we start. We don’t relocate tortoises or handle that process. Once you have it sorted with FWC or with an authorized agent, we’ll work to whatever plan comes out of it.
Different rather than harder. Scrub is dry and drains fast, so the machine travels well nearly any month, and the oaks are short. What it has is a dense low root mat and a real chance of protected species. Flatwoods is easier ground biologically and harder underfoot in the wet season.
No. We don’t do burning of any kind. Prescribed fire is a specialist trade with its own authorizations and its own risk, and it’s not something we offer or coordinate.
There’s a berry harvest industry in Florida, and harvesting saw palmetto berries is regulated by the state. It’s not something we’re involved in and we’d not advise on it. But if you have a lot of mature palmetto, it’s worth knowing the plant isn’t a nuisance.
The mechanics of each, and how to choose by what the lot is for.
Read it →ArticleWhat’s on your lot that a machine will make worse, and how we avoid moving it.
Read it →The serviceRates and how we price palmetto ground by density.
See mulching →Send photos and a rough acreage. You’ll get a real number back, usually within a day.
Request a quoteMost quotes come back the same day. No deposit, and the price we agree on is the price you pay.